CHATGPTactics
Referencing: CHATGPTactics
Jamie Hamilton:
But the outrage masks complicity. ‘Tactical analysis’ has been on course for this moment for decades, maybe over a century. Ever since its formalisation, football thinkers have tried to distil the game’s chaotic rhythms into ordered code.
Descartes had an epiphany while observing a fly buzz around his room. The insect’s movements seemed random, chaotic and impossible to capture in numerical form. Then he realised he could use the wall and ceiling as references; at any instant the fly’s position could be logged against a horizontal and vertical axis. Enlightenment! X and Y. Grid logic. Modern thinking. Full steam ahead!
Football’s flesh was flattened, movements tracked as coordinates. Diagrams, blueprints; X marks the spot. Connections were traced between the nodes of the network. Lines were drawn. Patterns appeared, symbols were assigned to represent them. 3–2–2–3 becomes WM. A scattering of stars becomes Ursa Major.
That’s a really good analogy.